OK so i began my japanese language learning early january and was making some GREAT progress using GENKI...but around April/May i decided to take a lil break to practice my art skills, I only plan a 1 weeks break MAX....but it turned out to be a whole month PLUS. So, i decided to get right back into GENKI 1 and finish it so i can begin GENKI 2. Can anyone kinda help me out, give me some motivation to start up again so i dont get distracted..by the....AMERICAN LANGUAGE!? XD i wonder if anyone else had this same problem...

before when i first started studying...somehow i was able to block distractions and focus.....but now....I keep getting distracted. Maybe i need to immurse myself more....if only i got japanese channels on direcTV T_T. Learning is important to me becuase...i want to be able to read, speak and write japaneseso i can understand manga, anime, and other things without having to wait for a translation

You're running into a common problem that people encounter studying Japanese -- your goals of anime and manga will take you many, many years to reach, and there is going to be a lot of boring, tedious work before you get there. Most people fail to learn Japanese unless they put themselves in a position where they have to learn it (i.e. taking classes, majoring in Japanese, going to Japan).

Yudan Taiteki wrote:your goals of anime and manga will take you many, many years to reach

I don't know if that's necessarily true. It'll indeed take years to reach the point that you can handle it almost as easily as English and get most of the nuances, but it shouldn't take years to take a manga you have and understand what it says. If nothing else, you can take the sentences, look up the words and grammar you don't understand, ask questions about things you're unable to find by looking up, and then drill the hell out of them. Then you will be able to understand it when you read it again, and will be prepared if you come across similar words or grammar in other works, which will very gradually reduce the amount of time you need to spend studying and drilling each text. I'm far from even functional in Japanese, but I could probably do this if I wanted to. (I don't yet, though.)

Of course, that sounds like, and is, work. But I didn't claim that you could do it without working at it. And, naturally, it'd be far more efficient if you get a good grasp of basic Japanese before doing this.

kyubisharingan wrote:OK so i began my japanese language learning early january and was making some GREAT progress using GENKI...but around April/May i decided to take a lil break to practice my art skills, I only plan a 1 weeks break MAX....but it turned out to be a whole month PLUS. So, i decided to get right back into GENKI 1 and finish it so i can begin GENKI 2. Can anyone kinda help me out, give me some motivation to start up again so i dont get distracted..by the....AMERICAN LANGUAGE!? XD i wonder if anyone else had this same problem...

There appears to be something seriously wrong with the shift key on your keyboard

Don't complain to me that people kick you when you're down. It's your own fault for lying there

furrykef wrote:but it shouldn't take years to take a manga you have and understand what it says. If nothing else, you can take the sentences, look up the words and grammar you don't understand, ask questions about things you're unable to find by looking up, and then drill the hell out of them. Then you will be able to understand it when you read it again, and will be prepared if you come across similar words or grammar in other works, which will very gradually reduce the amount of time you need to spend studying and drilling each text.

I have seen many people try this (including myself), and I've never seen anyone succeed. It's theoretically possible, but most people find it so dull and slow that they don't do it for very long.

When a person says that they want to learn Japanese to read manga, I think they mean that they want to read a manga series without the help of English translations, in a quick enough period of time that they don't get bored, and with a fairly high level of comprehension. For me, it was about 4-5 years of studying before I was able to do that.

kyubisharingan wrote:before when i first started studying...somehow i was able to block distractions and focus.....but now....I keep getting distracted. Maybe i need to immurse myself more....if only i got japanese channels on direcTV T_T. Learning is important to me becuase...i want to be able to read, speak and write japaneseso i can understand manga, anime, and other things without having to wait for a translation

While anime and manga are enjoyable, they shouldn't be your sole motivation. While I'm nowhere near as advanced as some of the members of this forum, I still feel qualified enough to offer an opinion. The Japanese classes I've taken in middleschool and highschool have been filled with people who's only motivation was anime/manga. Now you would think this would mean that they would have small advantange over everyone else, this turned out not to be true. The die hard anime/manga fans always did poorly on tests and quickly gave up because the class wasn't moving fast enough to teach them how to write or say " I am the instrument of your defeat, abandon all hope"(I wish I was lying).

Take me I love anime and manga but it's not my reasoon for studying Japanese. I actually started studying Japanese in middle school because, it was either Spanish or Japanese and I hated everybody who was taking spanish. So I was like what the hell let's learn Japanese and I liked it alot and now I'm trying to become fluent, because I believe becoming fluent in another language is a great thing to do and I am always more motivated to learn when it's outside of school and not for a class.

TL:DR,Your going to need a little more motivation than anime and manga

In the three years I've been (assistant) teaching Japanese, I have never noticed any direct correlation between anime/manga fandom, and performance in the class. In fact, I have not noticed any correlation between someone's reason for studying Japanese, and their performance in the classes. Of course there are otaku who do not do well, but there are many non-otaku who do not do well also. There are also some otaku who do fine. The unfortunate truth is that the majority of people who start studying a language, whatever their reason, will never succeed in attaining any functional level of proficiency. This is even more true in a difficult language like Japanese. If someone who likes anime fails, it's not necessarily *because* they liked anime.

Yudan Taiteki wrote:In the three years I've been (assistant) teaching Japanese, I have never noticed any direct correlation between anime/manga fandom, and performance in the class. In fact, I have not noticed any correlation between someone's reason for studying Japanese, and their performance in the classes. Of course there are otaku who do not do well, but there are many non-otaku who do not do well also. There are also some otaku who do fine. The unfortunate truth is that the majority of people who start studying a language, whatever their reason, will never succeed in attaining any functional level of proficiency. This is even more true in a difficult language like Japanese. If someone who likes anime fails, it's not necessarily *because* they liked anime.

I guess I should have phrased that better. It's not neccessarily because they like anime that they fail it's because their goals are bit unreasonable for anyone who is just starting out learning a languange. In no way is at an attack on otaku or anything like that, it's just in the trend I've noticed in the classes i've taken over the last few years. While liking anime may not be the direct reason people fail and dropout it does contribute. Someone sits in a class for six to eight months and finds that they can still only pick out phrases here and there in their favorite anime, they loose interest and quit.

On the other hand I do agree with the fact that alot people do eventually abandon the language for one reason or another. I don't really know what I meant buy any of this, but I do like the back forth! Once again just my opinions and observations nothing more.